Posterous: Will Twitter it Shut Down?

Yesterday we brought you news that Twitter had acquired Posterous. As we reported at the time, neither Posterous nor Twitter suggested in their announcements that Posterous would be closed. In fact, Posterous's statement said that "Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption."

A closer reading of the two announcements, though, may provide a few hints about what's to come for Posterous. For one thing, there's the middle paragraph of each statement - while I quoted it above as from the Posterous statement, in fact it comes from both statements. The following paragraph is identical in both statements:

Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.

While not saying that Posterous Spaces will eventually close, the statement definitely leaves open the possibility that it will. Moreover, the statements also promise users a way to get their data off of Posterous, which suggests that they may need to do so at some point.

The other big clue that Posterous's days may be numbered comes in the first paragraph of Twitter's post. Twitter says that "Posterous engineers, product managers and others will join our teams working on several key initiatives that will make Twitter even better." Again, they don't say that Posterous will be shut down, but it's pretty clear that Posterous's employees will be put to work on Twitter projects, not on Posterous itself.

Of course, nothing is certain just yet - Posterous may have quite a bit of life left in it. But reading between the lines of the two company's statements, it sure looks like Posterous's days are numbered.

What do you think? Will Twitter close Posterous? Should they fold the service into Twitter somehow? Let us know in the comments.